


I Died Everyday Waiting For You

by Fuzzball457



Series: Any Day Now [2]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Eventual Aftermath of Torture, Hospitals, Kidnapping, M/M, Other, References to Depression, eventual poly - Freeform, lots of swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-07
Updated: 2018-07-07
Packaged: 2019-06-06 13:14:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15195521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fuzzball457/pseuds/Fuzzball457
Summary: It was an unassuming day when he’d lost John and it was an unassuming day when he gained Lafayette.It is also an unassuming day when he finds John.





	I Died Everyday Waiting For You

**Author's Note:**

> Hi guys - sorry for the wait! This piece is shorter because I struggled with where to cut it off and what to include. I'm not sure if it lives up to the first one, but I feel like I had to include these scenes before we can get to a lot of the recovery and drama and so on. The next one will probably be short too and then we'll be back into the meat of things. 
> 
> P.S. I don't know how these things are officially handled by hospitals/police etc so I took some creative license combined with some crime TV and boom. Please excuse any inaccuracies. 
> 
> Thanks for all your wonderful feedback, you guys really made my day :D

The worst part of a tragedy isn’t the senselessness of it or even the sorrow of it, it’s the suddenness. The unexpected way you can get up like any other day, thinking it will be just like any other day, but by the time the day draws to a close, you will be someone entirely different.

When Alex got up that day, almost ten months ago now, he had no way of knowing how brutally his life was about to be ripped to pieces. He kissed John, still tucked into bed and barely conscious, good-bye and went for his early morning coffee and study session in the library, content in the knowledge that it would all still be there when he returned after class. John usually got home thirty minutes or so after he did so he wasn’t worried at first. John’s last class was one he shared with Hercules, so it wasn’t uncommon for them to get swept up in a particularly good conversation. An hour late was hardly anything.

Two hours wasn’t a huge deal, even if a call would have been nice (Alex was a little hurt, but they could smooth it over easily enough later).

Three hours was a problem and if John had gone out with Hercules without inviting Alex, or even letting him know, they would have more than a problem later.

Four hours was worrisome. Unanswered texts turned into unanswered calls. A call to Hercules confirmed that no, they hadn’t even stayed late chatting after class.

Five hours turned into a rag-tag search team and Alex threw himself into thinking up locations to check and planning people to check them. Doing nothing was dangerous, doing nothing let the chasm of fear open before him and that wasn’t helpful to anyone, least of all John.

Twelve hours saw an official report filed with campus security and twenty-four hours saw an official report filed with the local police department.

The next few days saw Henry Laurens flying up and a slew of interviews with detectives, campus officials, TV stations, news reporters, everyone and anyone under the sun. It wasn’t stressful because Alex had the gift of gab and if getting the word out had even the slimmest chance of helping them find John, he’d shout it from the rooftops if needed. He’d let no other words pass his lips. He’d tell anyone who’d listen. He’d get his John back with some crazy story of a few too many drinks and a half-assed accidental trip to Canada.

It’d be a riot.

Instead it was pain and hollowness. Just as fast as everything had wound up, everything began to wind down. One by one attentions dropped away. New cases came up. New stories ran on the news. _We did our best_ , the world said with a shrug, _time to move on._

But Alex couldn’t move on. He stood clutching his precious memories as the world went about erasing John from its collective consciousness all around him.

He was all alone.

And then, on one unremarkable day like any other, there was Lafayette, full of flirtatious charm and tender concern and never ending patience.

His painful memories had fresh, pleasant companions and they took turns probing Alex’s mind. They weren’t alone anymore and neither was he.

It was an unassuming day when he’d lost John and it was an unassuming day when he gained Lafayette.

It is also an unassuming day when he finds John.

 

The number displayed on his phone screen is vaguely familiar, but apparently not enough to warrant a contact name in his phone. He’s been awake for a good hour or so, but his mind is still sluggish from lying contentedly in bed watching as the rise of the sun caressed along Lafayette’s slumbering form. It’s early for a Saturday and Alex lives to bask in these lazy mornings.

He answers the phone quickly so as to silence the vibrations, but Lafayette begins to stir next to him nonetheless.

“Hello?” he says quietly, slipping his feet out of the covers so he can take the call in the hallway.

“Alex?” a feminine voice asks and Alex freezes, one pale foot just barely touching the sun-warmed carpet. Without thinking his hand flies out and snags on to Lafayette’s arm, rousing him further. Lafayette uncurls and stretches like a cat, but he catches on quick enough, apparently noting the way Alex’s breathing is hitched and uneven and the way his free hand is trembling.

“Alex?” Lafayette asks, sitting up to rub a hand along Alex’s back.

He barely feels it, head swimming with voices of the past, from a life so far removed it seems almost fictional.

“ _Marty?”_ He breathes, voice strangled through some blend of long dormant hope mixed with sick terror. He feels both razor sharp, hanging on every word and ready to leap to action, yet sluggish, as if he can’t get a full grasp on what’s happening and he’s left only with reactivity instead of proactivity.

“Alex,” Martha, John’s eldest sister, says and fear flies down Alex’s spine as he realizes she’s _crying._

Oh god. The body. They’d found it somewhere. He’s not prepared. He’ll never be prepared. There’s closure and then there’s this and Alex is not okay with switching from one to the other. His eyes are already welling and his chest physically aches as though his heart really is being broken yet again.

“They found him,” she chokes out. Alex stills, cocking his head and pressing the phone closer. Something isn’t right. It’s not misery that tinges her tears.

It’s…disbelief? Excitement?

He suddenly hears her shuddering breaths as hysterical giggles.

“What did they find, Marty?” he demands and it’s perhaps not the most logical question, but he can’t bring himself to say the word body. He can’t bring himself to give voice to hope and fear through the words alive or dead. It feels impossible to reduce it down to a black or white answer, but Alex feels it in his gut, this is one of those moments that will change his life irrevocably and he’s hanging on the precipice, unsure if he’s about to fly headfirst over or edge away.

“John. They found him,” she cries, her tears loud even so far away, and this time he definitely hears her voice peak with joy instead of cut off with agony. “They fucking found him, Alex!”

She sounds hysterical and Alex doesn’t blame her. His own mind is refusing to move past faint hope, it’s not accepting relief. This isn’t reality, it’s simply not possible. If there was anyone hit as hard by John’s disappearance as Alex, it was Martha.

Life cannot change that fast, it just can’t. Yet he would have said the same thing when he first opened his eyes on those pivotal days of the past. Maybe not every unexpected swerve in the road needs to be a tragedy?

“It can’t…I mean, are you sure? What…?” He’s not making a lick of sense and he can’t even hear her reply over the pound of blood in his ears. “What?” he repeats, feeling entirely separate from himself, as if he’s watching with sick fascination what it might be like if he, lowly old him, were to be granted a miracle.

She laughs and it sounds like salvation, golden and tinkling. “Just meet us at the hospital, I’ll text you the info. Daddy and I are just about to board a flight now. And Alex,” she adds, suddenly serious, “I didn’t tell Daddy you were coming. But I just…I mean how could I not?”

“Thank you,” he says on a long exhale, brushed with the anxiety of knowing just how close he came to _never knowing John was back_.

Unthinkable.

“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” he swears, already rising urgently to his feet.

Alex flies to the dresser, tossing the phone onto the bed as Martha hangs up, and rips clothes out at random to wear.

“Alex, what…?”

“Hurry, get dressed! We need to go!”

“What is going on?” he demands, though he gets to his feet and begins to change with equal urgency.

“John,” he replies, voice coming out breathlessly, as he kicks off his boxers and slips on a new pair.

“Alexander!” Hands stop his motions, grabbing his shoulders and carefully turning him around. Lafayette’s eyes are wide and confused and Alex feels a sting of guilt.

“They found him, Laf,” Alex says softly, voice and eyes equal measures of watery. “He’s alive.” Tears begin to drip unbidden down his face but they catch on the curve of his growing smile. “ _He’s alive.”_

Lafayette’s eyes go impossibly wider and his hands cup Alex’s upturned, hopeful face. _“_ Oh! How wonderful!” He nods and pulls away. “We must go at once!”

Alex is flooded with love at the way Lafayette just gets it. Alex’s joy is his joy. Alex’s relief is his relief. Alex’s love is-

Oh.

His mind crashes to a halt, watching as his boyfriend changes with previously unknown speed.

His boyfriend.

“Oh, god, Laf,” he chokes, suddenly aware that he has colossally fucked up. All those nights, consumed by guilt for rebuilding, they were deserved and then some. He let John go, all the while John was God only knows where having God only knows what done to him – and that’s a thought for later because Alex literally cannot take anything else right now – and now John will come back only to find himself replaced. But it’s not fair to Lafayette to drop him like yesterday’s news and Alex _doesn’t want to_ and doesn’t that make him all kinds of fucked up. He is an actual monster, the living epitome of betrayal and disloyalty.

“Alex!” Lafayette shouts in a way that suggests this is not the first time he’s called his name. Lafayette is once again in front of him, gripping his shoulders and staring determinedly in Alex’s face. “I know, _mon ami_ , I know, but we will figure all of that later, yes? For now, let’s get you to your John.”

Alex has never wanted anything more than he wants to do exactly that.

 

Lafayette, bless his precious heart, drops him off and offers, without Alex even having to ask, to occupy himself for a little while in the area. He promises to keep his cell phone on hand at all times, ready to lend his physical or cellular presence whenever Alex should request it.

A nurse, the first one Alex is able to flag down (and he’ll deny it to his dying day that he chased her down like a bloodhound at the first whiff of someone helpful), explains that he’ll only be able to see John through a visitor’s window for now. He’s sedated, but they’ll likely be bringing him out of it tomorrow and Alex can come back then, once John is able to approve or deny visitors. It's an unusual situation, she says with a shrug, and they're trying to handle it securely.

The word _deny_ catches like a malformed Cheez-It in his throat, but he tries not to think about it. John will want him, surely.

(He doesn’t know which is more painful: to picture John in agony for months somewhere, begging for Alex, or a John so closed off he doesn’t want even Alex by his side).

It’s a hurdle for tomorrow. An anxiety-fueled nightmare, he sternly tells himself.

“You’ll need ID tomorrow,” she warns and Alex doesn’t understand why until they round what feels like a thousand corners and he all but trips over a police officer, firm and unblinking, standing next to the doorway to a room.

Alex looks him up and down, but gets nothing in response.

He realizes he knows next to nothing about what’s been going on, not even John’s condition (other than tentatively stable) because he’s not family, and _no one will tell him anything_ , talking loops around his probing questions.

Seeing the officer, doing his best impression of those Buckingham Palace guards, brings the hallway shrinking in on Alex until all he can see is the glint of a badge against the well-pressed deep blue fabric.

The man is here to protect John. Because he needs protection. Because he was taken. By a person. Someone who willingly wanted to inflict all this pain on them. Someone who, in trying to destroy John, destroyed Alex.

Someone out there did this. Intentionally.

And every second of loneliness, of guilt, of _fucking agony_? A person, a living breathing human being, caused that, without a second thought.

Alex is so swiftly overcome with rage that his fingers tremble at his sides, where he’s curled them into fists. All those moments of ‘woe is me’ and sleepless nights bemoaning his shitty luck? Complete and utter bullshit. This isn’t bad luck. This isn’t fate having it out for them. This a person. A fucking person playing God and ruining their lives _just because they can_.

“Do you have the man that did this?” Alex demands, startling the nurse with his suddenly singular focus on the silent guard. He crowds up against the man, glaring directly into blue eyes which never leave the opposite wall.

It takes Alex a second but he swears he can see the slightest downturn of the corner of his lips. A no then.

“Sir,” the nurse says placating, but Alex plows over her meek objections.

“You fucking find him then.” The steel blue eyes cut in his direction, finally making eye contact. The officer looks oddly satisfied with Alex’s bristling passion, even as his face remains impassive. Meeting Alex’s gaze head on, he nods just so.

They’re on the same team then.

Good.

Satisfied, Alex takes a step back, content that this man won’t let anyone in to see John without proper credentials; content that this man takes John’s safety just as seriously as Alex himself does.

John.

Even as his gaze is pulled, as if by some magnetic bond between the two men, towards the window to John’s room, Alex slams his eyes shut. He’s suddenly unsure if he can look. He knows John’s not going to be conscious, won’t be until tomorrow if the nurse is to be believed, but he doesn’t think he can take the visage of John, chemically forced into sedation, lying helpless and exposed in a hospital bed.

He doesn’t know the damage yet, he doesn’t know what he’ll find.

A hand lands on his shoulder and he jolts viciously, though his eyes remain slammed shut (and if that doesn’t tell him just how afraid he is, then nothing will).

“Sweetie,” the nurse offers softly, close enough to whisper audibly, but not so close as to feel stifling, “I promise it’s not as bad as whatever horrors you’re cooking up in there. He’s been through a lot, don’t get me wrong, but physically, it’s much less visible than you’d think.”

Alex gets the implication. The scars are on the inside.

“He’s still your friend, even surrounded by all this medical mumbo jumbo.”

The word friend sparks a familiar annoyance. ‘Friend’ doesn’t do it justice. ‘Friend’ doesn’t suggest nearly a year of haunting memories, of a grief so powerful it almost killed him.

He doesn’t get to tell her so, even as his mouth flies open in anger, because the second his eyes open to set her straight, he sees through the window.

His anger pools at his feet faster than an upturned drink and some heart-clenching level of pain and love takes its place because _John._

John.

Here and real and _alive._

Alex will never ask for anything else the rest of his life because nothing could ever match this moment.

He’s both the same and different, as if it were an artist’s rendering of John lying there instead of the actual thing. He’s thin, but not overly so. He looks about how Alex imagines he might have looked in high school, when his height was a gangly one, rather than one defined by athleticism. There are bruises, deep purple-browns and sickly yellow-greens, peeking out from the collar of his hospital gown and ringing along his collarbone. There’s an IV line and a pulse oximeter on his finger, but mostly he’s free of the plethora of metal equipment that usually bogs patients down.

He looks like he had a bad cold, maybe a fever.

He doesn’t look like he’s been missing for nearly a year. He doesn’t look like he’s been tortured. He doesn’t even look like he’s been sad or lonely.

He doesn’t look like he missed Alex as much as Alex missed him. 

 

“Oh, Alex!” And suddenly he has an armful of Martha Laurens, smelling airplane fresh and already crying. Through her mane of hair, he sees the guard glance suspiciously at her, before seemingly concluding her to be harmless.

“Martha,” he offers distantly, absently petting a hand over her bundle of hair. It’s the same softness as John’s, but a bit lighter in color. More reddish. She’s severed his view of John and pulled him so violently from his thoughts, he’s not entirely sure where he is for a moment. He’s been here, staring though the last barrier between him and John - a clear one, thankfully - for hours probably. Maybe minutes. Days. Who knows. It doesn’t matter though, because John is still here. Alex subtly shifts them a few inches so he can see John past her bundle of hair.

Yup, still there.

The relief is thicker than it should be, considering he’d only been out of Alex’s sight for a matter of seconds.

Still.

“Oh, John!” she continues, pulling from Alex’s embrace to press against the glass like a kid at an aquarium. Her hands are flat against window and Alex knows John would make fun of the way they look from the other side if he could.

She looks equally as enraptured as Alex himself was when he first arrived and suddenly he’s grateful for her presence. Someone who knows that’s not just a person on the other side, but a person who has occupied nearly every second of Alex’s waking and dreaming moments. A person he’s worried about, hoped for, longed for, and, above all else, loved. That person is a miracle. A gift from a god Alex doesn’t believe in. He’ll start now, though, if that’s the payment for John’s return. He’d climb Everest or fling himself into the deepest sewers. Anything and everything.

Marty glances back at him, her smile wide and roguish despite the fat, hot tears that cut trails through her make-up. She looks so much younger than the last time Alex saw her, nearly a year ago. Then she’d looked not unlike Alex’s mother right before she passed. She has the same round, freckled face as John and her eyes glow with the same wild energy. She’s a few years younger, Alex thinks, but she’s always seemed far more put together than John. She married young. But she retained that same spirit, full of sass and independence and probably a lot of coffee.

“He’s beautiful, isn’t he?” she says softly.

Alex says nothing, only moving forward dumbly to look closer, as if he hasn’t memorized every inch of John, then and now.

It’s his eyelashes of all things that catch Alex’s eyes first. They’ve always been lovely. A passerby might say they’re black, but Alex knows they’re really a deep brown. It’s the rich color of fresh dirt and Alex has spent more than one post-coital snuggle staring at their graceful curve. They’re long and they look delicate now. Something beautiful, but fragile against the pale, uneven tone of John’s skin. Alex wishes so hard for his eyes to open that for a second he believes they flutter. But, in truth, they remain frozen and he doesn’t get to watch those elegant lashes flutter up and down in that way that John knows drives Alex crazy.

“Yes,” he replies, standing next to Marty, mirroring her eager pose. He’s never seen anything more beautiful.

“Hamilton.”

It’s only pure conditioning and gratefulness for his previous efforts in finding John that Alex turns to face Henry.

“Sir,” he offers politely. The senior Laurens cuts an impressive figure, though his middle has begun to bulge in his old age. He’s tall though, all the more so for his rigid posture and slight upward chin tilt, forcing him to always be looking down on those around him. He looks tired more than anything resembling relief or joy, but Alex doesn’t know the man well enough to truly discern much from his blank expression. Alex suspects the man could win the lottery and would probably frown at the lottery commissioner when he got the check.

“How is he?” Henry asks, nodding towards the window without taking his eyes of Alex. In fact, Alex realizes, he hasn’t once looked at John, hasn’t demanded entrance into his son’s room. There’s a viper’s bite of anger, but Alex tames it equally as quickly. Not everyone deals the same way, a voice in his head, suspiciously similar to Lafayette’s, reminds him. The man has been through what no parent ever should.

As John used to say, nose scrunched up in displeasure as Alex tried to probe clarity out of John’s ever-changing emotional state: Emotions are hard.

“Physically, not too bad, I think. They won’t tell me anything.” John's an adult; they don't have to tell Henry anything either, not with HIPAA and definitely not with the case still open. He doubts John ever took the time to set up a medical proxy. **  
**

Henry stares hard at Alex at that for some reason, gaze sharp and evaluating as ever, before finally nodding quickly, just an abrupt dip of the chin. He moves to look in the window, but Alex watches as his eyes rove around the room, settling on John for only a few seconds before leaping urgently away.

“How was the flight?” he asks blankly.

“Fine,” Marty says off-handedly while Henry only nods.

They stand that way, silent and awkward, for a good thirty minutes. Alex gives up playing sociable boyfriend and instead ignores them, letting all his attention settle on tracing the outline of John’s body under the sheet. Let someone else bear the burden of maintaining niceties for once. John’s the only one here who really matters anyway.

Eventually Henry clears his throat and begins to remove a crisp twenty dollar bill out of his wallet. Alex is baffled briefly before the man turns to Marty and says, “Go find yourself something to eat.”

She stares at him oddly, as many adult children being offered sandwich money might, before shaking her head. “I’m not hungry, Daddy.”

He doesn’t blink, the outstretched bill hanging like an bane between them. Martha meets his gaze, eyes unwavering and unwilling to acquiesce without further explanation. “Then would you please get me a coffee?” he finally asks, a trace of annoyance in his deep, southern voice. Martha’s eyes dart suspiciously towards Alex before she finally snatches the undeniable dismissal that is the money out of the air.

“Fine. But you’re getting tea instead. Better for your heart.”

As Alex watches her disappear down the hall, tennis sneakers squeaking obscenely with every bouncy step, he feels not unlike a bunny thrown to the lions. Sure enough, when he finally drags his gaze back around to face Henry, the man is staring stone-faced at him.

“As you may recall,” he begins, eyes unsettlingly piercing, “I did not approve of John’s choice in living an... _alternative_ lifestyle.”

“You were quite vocal about it…sir.” Henry’s lips purse to show just how pleased he is to be interrupted with that little jab.

“Yes. And, if you might remember, you and I frequently…did not see eye to eye when we met.”

“If that’s what you want to call it.”

Something like exasperation strokes across Henry’s face and Alex knows John would take his hand, silently saying _thanks, but that’s enough_. If he were conscious that is. Alex glances over at John - still there - and gives a minute nod. _Okay,_ he thinks, _that’s enough. Let sleeping dogs lie. Time to listen._

“I’m not here to hash out old issues,” Henry says curtly. “What I’m trying to tell you is this: I’m not pleased about your presence in my sons’ life. That is not, however, to say that I don’t recognize that you have developed a place in John’s life.” He sighs, rubbing along the length of his forehead. “I’m not thrilled you’re here, but I know this is where John would want you. I know if I asked him to choose between you and me, he’d pick you. You’ve carved quite the hole into John and I see that he’s yours more than mine now. I can’t give him what he needs. You can. And I intend to see that you give him that. You’ve won, you’ve replaced me. But don’t think for one second that if you slip up, I won’t destroy you. If you hurt him, if you leave him-”

“Never,” Alex swears immediately.

“I just need you to understand what you’re getting yourself into. John will need help, the depths and complexities of which I’m sure neither of us can yet begin to imagine, and I need to know you will take that responsibility seriously.”

It should feel like winning, like overcoming the last major obstacle to perfect happiness in his life with John. To hear Henry finally cease his constant attempted undermining of their relationship? Should be the last great gift.

Instead he feels a little overwhelmed. There’s the tiniest shred of pleasure somewhere in him for Henry and his ability to finally set aside his pride for the benefit of John. But, for the first time, Alex realizes he doesn’t want to _replace_ Henry. He doesn’t want it to be one or the other. He wants John to have both a doting boyfriend and a caring father, as he deserves to have. But at the end of the day, Henry is an unbending homophobe and his only solution to accepting John as he is, is to distance himself and let John flounce around gayly somewhere out of sight and out of mind.

One thing he is sure of, however, is his devotion to John. It’s messy, undoubtedly, especially with Lafayette in the mix. But Alex is certain that one thing he’ll never do is want to leave John.

At this point, he couldn’t if he tried. Nearly a year of miserable dysfunctionality has proven that.

“Yes, sir,” he says solemnly. And when Henry nods, something akin to pleased pride in his eyes, Alex thinks maybe this is what it’s like to have a father, always seeking approval even when you wish you didn’t want to.

“Good.” He turns away to look into the little white room. “Martha and I have booked a hotel room. We’ll stay a night or two, until John wakes up and is on his way to recovery. Then we’ll be on our way home.”

“John will want to see you both,” he says, even as he wishes they would leave immediately.

“Maybe,” he agrees, which hurts Alex a little more than expected. It may be a stormy relationship, but Alex has seen the dozens of tears shed over John’s distance with his family and he knows that John would be crushed if he knew they doubted his love. “Either way, we’ll get out of your hair soon enough. We wouldn’t want to overwhelm him.” Alex can only nod. “I’m going to find Martha and get us booked into our room.”

And Alex is alone once more.

Actually, not alone. Because John’s here.

Finally.

 

Lafayette fetches him a few hours later, tersely calling Alex to remind him that sleeping at the hospital is not a viable option. He doesn’t say much for the short ride home and Lafayette lets him exist, a reassuring, but silent, hand on Alex’s thigh.

He doesn’t know what to do with the gift he’s been given. Henry’s stepping down is only the icing on the cake, but it’s equally foreign feeling.

As Alex watches the retail centers and rolling hills blur by as they speed down the interstate, he’s confronted with the realization that he had given up.

He did not expect to ever see John again. It’s why he feels so unsteady, as if the ground were shifting beneath his feet. He did not expect John to be found alive. He doesn’t have a plan on how to move forward, how to blend his pre- and post-John’s disappearance lives together. He doesn’t know what to do about Lafayette.

He doesn’t know.

What will John be like? The same? A quivering mess? Will he want to move on or be stuck in a funk? This isn’t something that can be planned for. But, going with the flow seems insurmountable. The flow could be a trickling tap or Niagara falls. He’s been given the reins, but he doesn’t know where they’re going.

“Alex?” Lafayette asks gently, hand flickering a few inches from Alex’s shoulder. Alex goes to ask what, only to realize that it’s their building behind Lafayette’s head, not rolling darkness.

“Okay,” he says nonsensically, moving numbly to unbuckle and extract his uncooperative limbs from the car. Lafayette hovers as though Alex may faint dead away any second.

Lafayette guides him like a toddler, settling him on the bed with instructions to change into his pajamas. It’s not that late, visiting hours ended at eight, but Alex complies while Lafayette disappears into the kitchen.

“I’m not hungry,” he says automatically as the other man returns with a plate of cheese and crackers and two glasses of some rosé.

“Is that so?” Lafayette asks, voice light, and Alex looks down to find his fingers assembling a piece of cheese onto a cracker. He frowns and quickly stuffs the whole thing in his mouth so Lafayette will stop looking at it.

Lafayette changes, somehow maintaining both speed and grace, and settles next to Alex on the bed. The lights are low, a welcome change from the fluorescent glow of the hospital, and he feels a little more human, a little more tethered to the world around him. Alex rolls onto his back, enjoying the slight give of the mattress under him, and stares at the off-white ceiling.

“So,” Lafayette begins. He reaches a hand out to pet Alex’s arm, but Alex gives a little shake of his head and the other man easily obliges. He doesn’t look upset, so Alex lets the instinctive guilt settle. It’s too much right now. The room is dim and silent, but his thoughts are racing so much it feels as if each sense is overloaded. It feels not unlike that precipice moment before a panic attack, where his skin tingles and his mind is abuzz with indistinguishable noise. “Today was a lot, _mon cher_ , no?”

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he replies instead. It seems to be the running theme of his mental thought loops, the fulcrum around which everything is tottering.

“I doubt anyone would,” Lafayette says easily. He swirls his wine before taking a sniff and a small sip. Out of the corner of his eye, Alex savors the blissed way Lafayette’s eyes close for a second, somehow able to enjoy such a small pleasure in the middle of their shitstorm. Maybe that’s how he weathers the storm so well, Alex muses, watching him roll the flavor around his mouth. Savoring the little things.

“You’ll just have to ask,” Lafayette continues, as if that makes any sense. Alex lets his head roll heavily to the side so he can frown at the other man. “You don’t know what to do for John. Ask him. Let him tell you whatever he wants to tell you and ask him what he wants you to do. Then do it.” He shrugs. “Simple, no?”

“It’s not...it’s not that easy,” Alex mumbles, turning to stare back at the ceiling. He wishes it was a big notebook, so he could put some of his racing thoughts to paper. He doesn’t know what’s been happening to John all these months, but he doubts it was anything enjoyable. And what of Lafayette and their living situation? Alex still has the old apartment, but he hasn’t lived there in months and eventually he’ll have to explain the absence of all of his stuff.

“One day at a time,” Lafayette says sagely as he stares deeply into his wine.

“Just drink it, Yoda,” Alex groans, shoving a piece of cheese into his mouth without a cracker. He knows it drives Lafayette insane - “What about the cheese to cracker ratio, Alexander? What about the ratio?” - but Alex sees no reason to bother with the cracker when all he wants is the cheesy goodness. It’s Colby-Jack, Alex’s favorite, and fresh smelling too, meaning Lafayette probably went to a farmer’s market sometime during Alex’s hospital visit.

He doesn’t deserve such goodness.

“You’ll need someone.” Alex focuses his gaze only to find Lafayette staring at him, all sense of serenity gone. “I mean it. This will be very hard and if you’re going to help John, you’ll need someone to help you in turn. He’s a mess, but so are you, love, and the blind can’t lead the blind very well.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning, I’m not going anywhere. If you wish to keep our relationship a secret from John for the time being, then that’s fine. But I’m not going to leave you to deal with this by yourself. We’ll do this together until John is well enough for us to explain the situation to him. We’re adults, Alexander,” he says as naked fear overtakes Alex’s face. “Surely we can discuss the situation as such and decide on a solution?”

Alex doesn’t answer, instead rolling his head to face the opposite side of the room. His eyes slide over the familiar shape of the large mahogany bureau and fixate on the way the curtains shift ever slightly from the fan.

“Alex,” Lafayette says, stern but not unkind. “John’s no fool, and beyond that, he’s a good person. Surely he’ll have considered that you might have begun dating someone else, and, if he’s half as good as you’ve described him, he’ll undoubtedly be glad you had someone by your side through these difficult times.”

It’s too much.

Alex’s face crumples as he smushes it into the silky bed cover. Tears, hot and messy, are overflowing mercilessly.

How dare he feel anything but absolute joy at John’s return? How dare he let anxiety and uncertainty overwhelm this moment?

“Oh _, mon cher,”_ Lafayette whispers. His hand hesitatingly slips onto Alex’s back and when the other man doesn’t protest, begins to rub large circles through the thin cotton T-shirt. “Shh, I know, love, I know. We’ll get through this. One step at a time, okay? All three of us.”

A small whine builds up from somewhere in Alex’s chest until he’s all but gagging on the wail. “Oh, God. _Oh, God._ I gave up on him, Laf. _I gave up on him.”_ His chest aches like he’s been underwater too long and he takes raucous, gasping breathes between the wretched sobs.

“But you never stopped loving him, did you, _mon chou?_ No,” he agrees as Alex shakes his head into the duvet. “Of course not. You’re only human, Alex, and you did the very best you could. John will love you for that.”

 

Alex is in the waiting room twenty minutes before visiting hours begin. Henry and Marty are supposed to be by later. He sits in the squishy green armchair like an impatient puppy just learning new commands, eager to please but eager to move on too. John, he’s told, was weaned off of the sedation drugs early this morning and is expected to rouse any time now. Once he’s given permission, Alex will be able to go in. To hold his hand, to ran a hand through his hair. To touch the warmth of his skin and to feel each breath as if it were his own.

It doesn’t feel real. It’s too sweet a relief to happen to someone like Alex, someone who’s gotten nothing but the worst of breaks his entire life. The joy is a rich coating on his tongue but a stony ball in his stomach. He doesn’t know what to think, what to do, what to say. The uncertainty of what awaits not just in that hospital room, but in the foreseeable few months tethers his excitement. His relief feels like a high-class socialite gift, beautiful and intricate in its design yet impractical and useless in his pragmatic, scrappy eyes.

It’s not easy to reconcile who he is with who he was, who John knew him as. He’s become two people: John’s Alex and Lafayette’s Alex and, as he sits in a florescent limbo, he flickers between the two. His hopeful, barely taped together self is in direct contrast with the headstrong man John knew him as. There’s a cold voice in the back of his head that oozes chilled uncertainty down his spine and forces him to ask himself if, fragile as he is, he can be what John needs. John being back is a miracle of miracles, a once in a lifetime shot, but it doesn’t undo every agonizing day Alex has dragged himself through and the reality is, he’s not done healing. Probably never will be. Despite Lafayette’s assurances, Alex can’t help but wonder if John will judge him unsatisfactory in fulfilling the Alex-shaped hole in his life

“Mr. Hamilton?” His eyes flick up from their concentrated stare at the scuffed linoleum. “Mr. Laurens is awake and asking for you. There’s five minutes left until visiting time, but I think I can make an exception. Just make sure to show your identification to the guard at the door.”

He stands like a marionette yanked to attention and his uncertainty drains with his ascent. His own fears, his own worries, they’ve never mattered nearly as much as John.

His pace quickens with every step as he follows an already memorized path. In his chest, his heart is beating like a freshly caged bird, desperate for fulfillment. Without thinking he wipes his sweaty palms on his pants and lets the roar of blood drown out any remaining hesitancies. His own misery, his own uncertainty – it just doesn’t matter right now. Relief and passion and hope tangle on his tongue, threatening to trip his feet in his hurry, and he’s almost light headed with elation as he rounds the final corner. The shades are drawn on the window, blocking his view of John and he fumbles his license towards the guard with numb, wooden fingers. The guard painstakingly consults a list in his pocket, which is ludicrous because how many people can John have already approved to visit – surely he can remember the three or four names? – before finally handing the license back with a nod and stepping aside.

The knob slips in his sweaty palms and he all but throws it open in haste but then-

He’s in.

He’s in John’s room. With John. Who is alive and turning his head slowly to look at Alex, apparently unruffled and seemingly unsurprised by Alex’s gawky entrance.

Some things never change.

Alex freezes, transfixed by the caramel gaze. His skin is pale, painting the constellations of freckles in stark contrast. He doesn’t look so gaunt, face rounded by the bloat of IV fluids. His eyes though…bright and clear, meeting Alex’s gaze head-on like he’s been waiting all his life for Alex to walk through that door.

He’s not sure if John can hear the stampede happening in his chest, but Alex can’t hear anything else, not even as the guard tugs the door out of his numb fingers and closes it behind them. Then it’s them, just John and Alex, alone in a room like he never thought they would be again.

With a slowness that hints at lingering painkillers, the shakiest of smiles, a tiny, delicate thing, unfolds across John’s chapped lips. It surely pulls at the dry skin painfully, but John doesn’t flinch, and for the smallness of the gesture, there’s two-fold certainty to back it. In fact, John has never looked so sure of anything before in his life as if Alex’s presence is the climax of years of uphill battles.

Those chapped lips part, drawing Alex’s laser gaze, and, with a satisfied leisureliness, whisper, “Alex.”

In the second it takes for Alex’s heart to seize and spasm in a joy so powerful it feels like agony, his legs stumble forward until he drops to his knees, hands finding John’s, already outstretched and ready. His forehead drops gently to rest on the bed, the lowered rail digging unnoticed into his chest.

 _“John,”_ he whispers, the name a prayer on his lips, reverent and pure.

There’s a feather-light touch on the back of his head, thin and uncoordinated fingers drawing softly through his greasy hair. The questing fingers slip tenderly behind his ear and along his jaw bone until they come to prod at his chin. Obligingly, Alex lifts his head to stare at John’s smiling features, softened with nothing shy of adulation.

“My Alex,” he whispers, voice quiet but sure. Alex watches a small tear slink along John’s cheek, but he leaves it to match the three or four that have already carved a way down Alex’s own face. They’re fat and salty as they brush along his lips, but it feels sacrilegious to wipe them away. They’re an homage to the moment and to the pain which brought them here. John’s hand is warm and large as it slides up to cradle Alex’s face and he brings up his own hand to cover it, tethering them together.

John’s tears fall faster, unbidden testimonials, and the first slice of sorrow slips across his features. His fingers curl slightly against Alex’s cheek and, with sudden urgency, he says, “You’re okay. Right? You’re okay.”

And Alex doesn’t know who he’s asking or if he’s even asking at all, but he finds himself nodding with increasing vigor, crying “Yes, yes. Of course. You’re here. You’re here.” His words choke off as sobs catch in his throat so he lets John’s hand tug him in until he’s all but lying in the bed, face buried in John’s shoulder, the course fabric of the hospital gown against his chin while the soft curls of John’s hair tickles his forehead. “I love you. I love you,” he swears.

John says nothing, crying in earnest now, but his arms wrap around Alex while his malnourished body shakes beneath them, and his tight embrace begging Alex to _please, please stay_ tells him more than enough.

 

“Your dad should be here soon,” Alex says, breaking their mutual silence. He’s lying in the bed alongside John and it’s a bit of a tight fit, but there’s nowhere else he’d rather be. He can feel the steady thump of John’s heart against his own skin. His fingers trail absently through John’s hair. It’s shorter than Alex is used to and the uneven hunks suggest the haircut was less than professional. Probably not consensual either, but that’s a can of worms for another time.

“Okay,” John says quietly. Alex doesn’t know if he should testify to the great lengths Henry Laurens went to get his son back, if he should tell John of their discussion yesterday and Henry’s cessation of power. He doesn’t know if it’ll hurt too much or complicate things beyond John’s tolerance right now. Already each word, each decision, feels like it carries the weight of the world with it. Each step could be the wrong step and he misses the days when he would just rush forward unmindfully, confident in his ability to pick up any pieces he might break on the way.

“And Marty,” he adds, because he knows that she’s always held a soft spot in John’s heart.

“Okay,” he says again, this time with a hint of fondness.

He doesn’t know if John is waiting for him to ask the big questions or maybe he’s hoping it will go forever unaddressed. There are small scars littered across John’s body that stand out like foreign markers to Alex, but it’s not the outside that Alex is worried about.

“What about you?”

“Me?” He wonders briefly if John has forgotten Alex has no living family. None that he cares to meet anyway. But he dismisses such a thought even before John clarifies.

“Is there anyone here for you? Hercules? Or…or a boyfriend?”

“Boyfriend?” he repeats, startled and entirely unprepared to pick apart such a complex web at the moment.

“Or girlfriend,” John shrugs like that’s what Alex is upset about.

“John,” Alex tires to placate, but John is having none of it.

“No, Alex. I’m not stupid. I’ve been gone for a year. That’s practically forever in college. I wouldn’t blame you if you…you know, moved on.”

“Moved on?” he asks, more crushed than he cares to admit. Alex sits up, putting enough distance between them that he can look John in the face properly. “John,” he says, and the little crack in his voice draws John’s wayward eyes back to meet his, “every day was…was fucking horrible without you.”

He can see in the imperceptible shift in John’s face, the way his eyes glance away to keep them dry, the way his fingers suddenly start toying with the sheet – he can see it hurts John to hear. But he needs to say it. “I missed you _so much._ I…” Recalled misery chokes his throat and seizes his chest. Those nights when he thought it might be worth dying because it was too exhausting just to fucking live. Those moments when he cried so hard he thought he’d die before he ever found relief. The days when he’d turn Lafayette away at the door because it was too much to even say hi.

Alex had tried so hard, so unbelievably hard to keep going. To keep his days productive and to savor his time with Lafayette. To get up each morning even when he’d rather have wallowed in a nest of his own sorrow for the rest of eternity.

But never, not for one goddamned second, did he _move on_.

It wasn’t some whirlwind romance break-up. He didn’t eat a pint of ice cream then jump up the next night to hit the scene and start again. Every inch of progress towards sanity came with miles of agony behind it and John wasn’t allowed for one single second to think that Alex was _fucking fine_ without him.

John’s staring at him, eyes wide and startled. Worried even. He looks more focused than Alex has seen him in the last two hours combined.

“Oh,” John says, letting the little noise encapsulate everything as Alex looks back at him with watery eyes and shaky limbs.

“Yeah.” He takes a deep breath because even though he was once in the longest night he’d ever seen, he’s here now, in the late morning light with John before him to keep him going forward and Lafayette behind him to keep him from falling back. “But you’re here. And…we’re both human disasters, right, so it’s probably going to be a shit show for a while, but don’t ever think I didn’t miss you every single minute you were gone. Don’t think I’d rather be anywhere than here.”

John doesn’t speak, doesn’t even blink, for so long Alex is starting to wonder if he accidentally blurted it all out in a demonic tongue or something. But finally, John opens his mouth, letting the words savor before rolling out like a fine crafted wine. “I thought about you every day, Alex. Every day. It’s the only thing that got me through that hell. It’s the only reason I didn’t give up. Because I knew I needed to get back to you.” His voice is flat and his eyes are shuddered, but it’s the first glimpse into the past year that Alex has gotten. Even that feels like more than he wants to know. But he’ll take whatever John wants to give and so he nods, maintaining John’s intense gaze, and lets the solemnity of the statement hang in the air for a moment.

“I love you,” Alex says quietly after a moment. John reaches out, snagging a hold of his shirt sleeve and tugging until Alex burrows in next to him again.

“Love you too.” 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Loved it? Hated it? Leave a comment and let me know! They really make me so happy :)


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